Anilrgowda

With perhaps the longest game name in history, World Championship Poker Featuring Howard Lederer All In is the latest in Crave’s card-game series and the first on Xbox 360. It builds on the previous games’ foundation nicely, especially if you’re into a wide variety of poker game types.


Gameplay

If you’ve played the previous Xbox WCP games, WCP All In (the short version we’ll use from here on) will be familiar, though the art direction has been changed from a straight-up poker game to one that now features splashy, quirky graphic screens. These screens also offer you tips from various pro players that can be helpful if you’re learning to play poker competitively, though it doesn’t take too long before you’re reading the same ones over again.

Once you’re in the card-playing section, it’s pretty straightforward, but the option screen does give you the ability to set a number of color schemes for the accompanying graphics from somewhat plain to wild to hard on the eyes. Just the same, it’s a welcome switch from previous poker titles.




As you would expect, there’s a Career Mode that starts you with a small bankroll. To progress your character (after creating it in a somewhat standard editing section), you then have to move from game to game on a world map, with each location a different game or tournament. Some games will be out of reach because of a high buy-in, while other games you may not choose to play. With 19 variations, you may not know how to play some of the more obscure games, such as Crazy Pineapple, which means you’ll have to pick and choose from the map locations to stay with the games with which you’re comfortable.

WCP All In offers an RPG-ish aspect by also giving you skill points as you progress. These can be added to your character’s attributes, making it easier to read your opponents or bluff, among others. It’s an incentive to play deeper into the single-player game, though if you have poker skill you might find the skill points unnecessary, as the AI is pretty predictable (though also crazy) after you’ve played against it for a while.

In fact, that’s the downfall of any poker game’s durability—at least for the single-player module: If the AI is somewhat one-dimensional, it doesn’t give you too much competition in the long run. In WCP All In, if you hang back until you get a good hand, then slowly trap it with small bets at all streets, you can usually take down the game regularly. It was nice to see the AI showing off bluffs on which it had put big bets, which is a bit more realistic, but mostly it’s a one-trick pony that plays made hands aggressively—though often overplaying middle pairs and lone aces.

Thankfully, the “bluff/tell” mini-game of WCP 2 has been made an option, though in all honesty, it should be eliminated all together. You’ll be smart to leave it off. It’s still not easy to get the right selection, and in a game like this bluffs and tells on a 3-D character are easily ignored by skilled players in favor of watching opponent betting habits anyway.
he one option you’ll want to turn on for single-player gameplay is the Turbo setting, which makes the card dealing, betting and folding much faster than a real-life game. If you’re an experienced player or just end up playing WCP All In a lot, you’ll welcome the ability to streamline the action to just the essentials.

A Scenario Mode is included, with a series of challenges, sort of like a “Checkmate in XX Moves” puzzles you get in a chess game. It puts you in a situation and tells you what you need to do to achieve victory. Unfortunately, a couple of them don’t rely on just your skill, such as one where you have to break even and make sure that another player wins. Given how erratic the AI can be, you’ll likely end up playing this scenario more than a few times to win it.

As with any poker game, the main objective is to take on other real-world players in online multiplayer, and WCP All In provides that in, uh, spades. As with any Xbox Live-enabled title, you expect a Quick Start, a searching function to seek out just the type of game you want, and a full slate of options in hosting your own game. It’s all here, cleanly designed for easy selection. WCP All In supports games with up to 16 players.




Graphics

Aside from the other loading-screen graphics and status displays, the game’s 3-D models are adequate, though not great. However, you won’t buy this game for stunningly detailed characters and animation, so it’s not a horrible disappointment either.


Audio

No surprise here that the audio is decent and even entertaining…for about five minutes, before it starts repeating the same lines and the background music becomes a broken record. Know where the option screen is so you can turn these things down and substitute your own soundtrack and play-by-play patter.


The Bottom Line

While WCP All In isn’t a no-frills game, what has been added gives it a different feel—at least until you get into the gameplay, which is standard poker bot style (against the AI players) or with varied style, temperament and/or language (playing others online). That’s why you bought it, and it’s a good deal for $30.

But is it a great deal? No, but there haven’t been any poker video games that have successfully provided a battery of AI opponents that play like humans, which is to say unpredictably and requiring you to constantly change up your play in order to succeed. That’s the game I’m looking forward to playing. Maybe Crave will get that going in the next WCP game…whatever l-o-n-g name it’s given.
Platform:
Xbox 360
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Publisher:
Crave Entertainment
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Developer:
Point of View, Inc.
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Genre:
Card/Casino
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Release Date:
Q4 2006
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Game Features:
Offline Players: 1
Online Multiplayer
Online Leaderboards



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There’s not much you can do screw up a poker sim, though the AI players make erratic and strange plays regularly. Also, if you don’t want to play all the variations of poker, you might have to work your way around the career mode.






I like that there’s a funky style that’s been adopted for the game from the dry, button-down versions previously released






As with most poker games, the voice acting is fun for about five minutes, then incredibly repetitive…and then downright annoying.






If you can stand the maniac AI in single player, that and online multiplayer should last you forever—or at least until the next WCP.






There’s really not much innovative here, but you don’t expect it to be either—it’s just a poker game!